Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Hidden truths?

Do we sometimes hide our true selves so well, that it's hidden even from our selves? Is our nature- what the world perceives on the outside or what we feel on the inside? Yet if it is the latter, do we even remember what it was? At times it feels as if the mask we wear for the world , takes over with so much vigilance that we forget that there was ever anything else. The years go by, we fall into a routine, like an old shoe the mask becomes comfortable. And isn't comfort what most people are after? Do we really want "abrupt change" -a break from the old monotony and routine? When faced with self doubt or an awareness of wanting something more, whose to say that our old way of life wasn't satisfactory...
It takes courage to face yourself. The good and the... parts of yourself that you were fooling for such a long long time. It helps if you have a friend or someone to guide you along your new path. One step at a time, and soon perhaps to quote our new president..change is possible.
It seems to be the year for new beginnings. May it bring with it some peace and stability.
smiling, perhaps I have become a bit philosophical tonight..bear with me!

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Paul Krugman: Forgive and forget?

Another writer whom I admire, and although I hadn't thought it possible, he has a point. Isn't it interesting how after Nixon, everyone seems to get away with their crimes?

Published Jan.16,2009 Editorial of IHT.

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration."I don't believe that anybody is above the law," he responded, but "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

I'm sorry, but if we don't have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years - and nearly everyone has taken Obama's remarks to mean that we won't - this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don't face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Let's be clear what we're talking about here. It's not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation's security. The fact is that the Bush administration's abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for "right-thinking Americans" - their term, not mine - and there's strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians.

The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq - an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security - in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.

Speaking of Iraq, let's also not forget that country's failed reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly found his or her career derailed.

There's much, much more. By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years - in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated.

And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?

Why, then, shouldn't we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn't there be some penalty for the Bush administration's politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we're told that we don't have to dwell on past abuses, because we won't repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration's political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won't do it all over again, given the chance?

In fact, we've already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it's giving Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off - which isn't too surprising when you bear in mind that Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again.

Meanwhile, about Obama: While it's probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he's going to swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's not a conditional oath to be honored only when it's convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that's not a decision he has the right to make.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Thomas L. Friedman: Tax cuts for teachers

Over the next couple of years, two very big countries, America and China, will give birth to something very important. They're each going to give birth to close to $1 trillion worth of economic stimulus - in the form of tax cuts, infrastructure, highways, mass transit and new energy systems. But a lot is riding on these two babies. If China and America each give birth to a pig - a big, energy-devouring, climate-spoiling stimulus hog - our kids are done for. It will be the burden of their lifetimes. If they each give birth to a gazelle - a lean, energy-efficient and innovation-friendly stimulus - it will be the opportunity of their lifetimes.

So here's hoping that America's new administration and Congress will be guided in shaping the stimulus by reading John Maynard Keynes in one hand - to get as much money injected as quickly as possible - and by reading "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future" with the other.

"Gathering Storm" was the outstanding 2005 report produced by the U.S. National Academies on how to keep America competitive by vastly improving math and science education, investing in long-term research, recruiting top students from abroad and making U.S. laws the most conducive in the world for innovation.

You see, even before the current financial crisis, we Americans were already in a deep competitive hole - a long period in which too many people were making money from money, or money from flipping houses or hamburgers, and too few people were making money by making new stuff, with hard-earned science, math, biology and engineering skills.

The financial crisis just made the hole deeper, which is why our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating. It needs to be able to produce not only more shovel-ready jobs and shovel-ready workers, but more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready and knowledge-ready workers.

If we spend $1 trillion on a stimulus and just get better highways and bridges - and not a new Google, Apple, Intel or Microsoft - your kids will thank you for making it so much easier for them to commute to the unemployment office or mediocre jobs.

Barack Obama gets it, but I'm not sure Congress does. "Yes," Obama said Thursday, "we'll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges and schools by eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we'll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy." Sure that means more smart grids and broadband highways, he added, but it also "means investing in the science, research and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and entire new industries."

But clean-tech projects like intelligent grids and broadband take a long time to implement. Can we stimulate both our economy and our people in time? Maybe rather than just giving everyone a quick $1,500 to hit the mall to buy flat-screen TVs imported from China, or creating those all-important green-collar jobs for low-skilled workers - to put people to work installing solar panels and insulating homes - we should also give everyone who is academically eligible and willing a quick $5,000 to go back to school. Universities today are the biggest employers in many congressional districts, and they're all having to downsize.

My wife teaches public school in Montgomery County, Maryland, where more and more teachers can't afford to buy homes near the schools where they teach, and now have long, dirty commutes from distant suburbs. One of the smartest stimulus moves we could make would be to eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I'd also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers, staple green cards to the diplomas of foreign students who graduate from any U.S. university in math or science - instead of subsidizing their educations and then sending them home - and offer full scholarships to needy students who want to go to a public university or community college for the next four years.

JFK took us to the moon. Let BHO take America back to school.

But that will take time. There's simply no shortcut for a stimulus that stimulates minds not just salaries. "You can bail out a bank; you can't bail out a generation," says the great American inventor, Dean Kamen, who has designed everything from the Segway to artificial limbs. "You can print money, but you can't print knowledge. It takes 12 years."

Sure, we'll waste some money doing that. That will happen with bridges, too. But a bridge is just a bridge. Once it's up, it stops stimulating. A student who normally would not be interested in science but gets stimulated by a better teacher or more exposure to a lab, or a scientist who gets the funding for new research, is potentially the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They create good jobs for years.

Perhaps more bridges can bail us out of a depression, but only more Bills and Steves can bail us into prosperity.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Words of Bush's America

I found this link on the BBC and since it deals with "words" I thought it worth placing. I'm not a psychologist but there must be a subliminal link with the words stressed and the reaction of the people! The charts interested me the most-especially the changes during election year.

(click on the title to follow the link to the bbc news article.)

Monday, January 05, 2009

This will be....

a very good year..I can sense it in the air.

Freud recommended that we work and love-
yet to love, we must be open in spirit and receptive to let others in,
letting go of past hurts,
we move forward into the unknown.
The sun guides our movements opening a path through the snow-
closing my eyes..I listen to the sound of the wind,
and feel those who surround me when I am most vulnerable.

Following a dream

How far do we go to follow a dream? Do we have the strength to give it all up? Rise up in the face of all we know and just let go? How simple it seems..two words..let go! Yet how many of us can truly let go and be free? Free from lifes entanglements and snares? It's not easy, yet most things of value never are. For most of us, being free came and went with childhood. Lost memories of times long ago, when all was take care of by an unknown hand. A mother, father, grandparent...someone else to bear the burden of life's responsibilities. Yet all too soon, we have grown up..it is not what we imagined, we (at least those of us who have grown up in big cities) soon forget the spontaneity of laughter, the easy sigh of sleep, entrapped in what we believe we must be. What we have been taught that we should want. Material gain will make us happy..staring at a tv screen will obliviate our mind to the days stress and monotony. I for one was the same, struggling in my own right, trying hard not to conform, knowing that each day it was becoming more difficult to resist what has been ingrained. I like most found it was easier to give up, and accept. Letting go! should not be so difficult..yet it is like jumping into deep water for the first time, scared that you will get lost. Yet water is buoyant and rarely do we drown, we are made to survive. It is only our own socially constructed fears that stop us from letting go and being free...
Yes the definition of free is different for all, for me it is being unburdened by the past, by the future, and trying to live in the moment. Something I too have yet to accomplish.

This weekend I learned a lot in Montreal, thanks to Genevieve and Thierry, and their friends. They were kind enough to welcome me, and in a cabin near a frozen lake. I found peace. It would have been difficult not to, surrounded by snow and pine forests..minus 25 C yet it was marvelous. Fresh, invigorating and most of all alive.
I discovered a world which I thought only existed in the memories of the old, I caught a tantalizing glimpse in Brittany. Yet here I was in the middle of a traditional square dance, wood burning stove and all. Guess what, they were all young, and talented. Filled to the brim with life, it flowed out of their instruments, violins, flutes- guitars. It also flowed in their story telling..tales long past. Which came alive under the one instrument that we are born with, our ability for speech. It was the same with the cailleux, or the caller directing the square dance. Probably not more then 30, he traveled to France and Scotland, and acquired them first hand, remembering the patterns and the lyrics..For some this may be nothing, yet for me it opened my eyes..perhaps not all but some live a life much simpler then most.
It would be a mistake to regard my words as those being too naive. I for one know that every life has its own share of difficulties, heartbreaks and times of frustration, yet to overcome all this and still be able to live a life free from the constraints and dictates of society. Given the ability to survive on your own capabilities, without being told what to do, working outside not enclosed in four walls. Your walls are forests filled with trees, your boss the climate, perhaps a more difficult task master -its fury is immense. Yet your ceiling is an immense canvas, of changing colors, grey, pink, dark blue..only to surprise you in the end with the most magnificent show, of glittering stars, shapes and sliding comets. An ever changing pattern, interspersed with the moon..I saw the southern cross pulsing with life, and orions belt pointing the way, only to stay mesmorized till my feet were numb and now I have a cold, but to be there again, it would be worth it. Looking up at the sky, you realize how totally insignificant you are and all the worries and stress are for nothing. People pass from one world to the next yet these patterns have stayed the same for thousands of years...Im glad Ive come to realize this while I still have the energy to evolve..and follow a dream as well. If I only let go.